Monday Morning Briefing

Reuters Staff

12 Min Read

A gunman killed at least 50 people when opening fire on the Las Vegas strip, Spain faces a constitutional crisis after the Catalan independence referendum and U.S. President Trump’s two-for-one requirement begins to slash health and safety red tape.

Metro Police officers pass by the front of the Tropicana hotel-casino after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus

Las Vegas

A gunman killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 200 at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, raining down rapid fire from the 32nd floor of a hotel for several minutes before he was shot dead by police. The death toll, which police emphasized was preliminary and tentative, would make the attack the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, eclipsing last year’s massacre of 49 people at an Orlando night club.

Spain

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy faces Spain’s biggest constitutional crisis in decades after the violence-marred independence referendum in Catalonia opened the door for its wealthiest region to move for secession as early as this week. The streets of Barcelona were quiet, but newspaper editorials said the referendum, in which Catalan officials said 90 percent of voters had chosen to leave Spain, had set the stage for a decisive clash between Madrid and the region.

Trump pledged to cut regulations with his executive order issued in January requiring federal agencies to offset each new regulation with two deregulatory actions. A Reuters examination of rules published in the Federal Register, a U.S. government journal, shows that so far in 2017, agencies have proposed or finalized 25 deregulatory measures under the two-for-one requirement - a broad easing of rules that will affect workers from miners and farmers to pilots and crane operators.

Graphic: A closer look at 25 rules that U.S. government agencies have proposed or finished rolling back under Trump’s requirement that each new regulation be offset by two deregulatory measures.

People use their smartphones to take photos of the L'Oreal fashion show on the Champs Elysees avenue during a public event organized by French cosmetics group L'Oreal as part of Paris Fashion Week, France, October 1, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

World

The man suspected of carrying out an attack in the French city of Marseille, killing two people, had been arrested and then released by police two days before the incident, a source close to the police investigation said. The source said the suspect - who went by eight different identities or aliases - was stopped by police in Lyon on Sept. 29 on suspicion of robbery. He was then released for a lack of evidence.

For days now, Puerto Ricans have awoken each morning to decide which lifeline they should pursue: gasoline at the few open stations, food and bottled water at the few grocery stores with fuel for generators, or scarce cash at the few operating banks or ATMs. The pursuit of just one of these essentials can consume an entire day – if the mission succeeds at all – as hordes of increasingly desperate residents wait in 12-hour lines.

Business

The dollar soared as U.S. Treasury yields hit their highest in almost 12 weeks, while Spanish borrowing costs rose and stocks fell as a police crackdown on a unilateral independence vote in Catalonia rattled investors.

If history is a guide, Uber’s new Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi is likely to dangle data sharing and a promise to pay fines and fees when he sits down with London officials to negotiate the ride service’s future in one of its most important markets. From the Philippines to Portland, Oregon, the strategy has worked time and time again for the San Francisco company.

Commentary

Europe remains a hub of nationalist struggles, writes columnist John Lloyd. While the far-right parties in the Netherlands and France were defeated earlier this year, the gains made by Germany's Alternative for Germany and rising anti-immigrant sentiment in parts of Scandinavia and central Europe shows that nationalism "remains a dominant current in the politics of the democratic countries."

Better electricity grids could have eased Puerto Rico's misery after Hurricane Maria left the island without power, writes Julie McNamara, an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It's impossible to stop all outages, she says, "but it is possible to design the system such that when the power does inevitably fail, fewer people are affected from the outset and power is restored more quickly for the rest."